Note 247 — Chapter VI · CITIES AND PEOPLES (C) PRIMITIVES, CULTURE-PEOPLES, FELLAHEEN
Charles Francis Atkinson translation
It is not to be overlooked that both Plato and Aristotle in their political writings were unable to conceive of the ideal people otherwise than in the Polis form. But it was equally natural for the eighteenth-century thinkers to regard “the Ancients” as nations after the fashion of Shaftesbury and Montesquieu—it is we their successors who ought not to have stayed on that note.